We have several writers that know pretty much everything about the broker market, technology, the web, websites, seo and everything you need to know to make it today. Our articles are meant to inform and help you understand the subject matter more and are not as a complete guide. Some might be short and sweet.
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I have been in this market for 15 years so that isn’t as long as some others here but I have been a technologist for over 25 years. I hear many brokers saying its legal in Canada to use bots and are moving their office to Canada to be able to use bots “legally” and I wanted to clarify something.
NO USAGE OF ANY BOTS IS LEGAL. Why do you think the creators of these bots are overseas instead of in Canada? Extradition is why. Canada and the US have perfectly good Extradition treaties in place.
By using a bot, you are KNOWINGLY breaking the laws of a sovereign country the US and the ToS of TM. The people who went to Canada to try to go around the law are eventually going to be in even more trouble as they have broken more laws in doing this.
TicketMaster owns its servers. When you go to their website, you are agreeing to their Terms of Service whether you take the time to read them or not. When you go to a hotel, restaurant, rent a car or go to a venue, it’s the same thing. The minute you walk in the door or use the service, or in this case go to the website, you agreed to abide by those terms and that includes the terms regarding the use of bots.
These bots are poorly written code. They’re easily traced and found which means, TM knows who is using them, what they are doing with them and everything in between.
So, do yourself a favor. Don’t use bots. You’re not only hurting yourself but this industry as well which puts thousands of people out of work for your profit?
I will not be surprised when TM comes out with a list of offenders that they go after to the fullest extent of the laws to make examples of what happens when you violate their TOS. Do some simple research a few others have already been pursued, sued and jailed. That won’t only affect the offenders, it will likely destroy this market itself when enough public outcry demands change. Bot users will be villainized, fined, jailed along with all the legit brokers in this market and more and for what? The more that use the bots, the faster the STM will die! Don’t help Ticketmaster destroy this amazing market!
I could EASLY find all of you if I worked at TM in a matter of weeks and even if I didn’t work at TM. I could simply sign up for this bot trashware and decrypt and hack into their network and find you all than do a press release and name you, help law enforcement on both sides of the border as the bots might not be illegal but what you are doing to Ticketmaster’s servers is! If I’ve thought about how to find you, don’t you think TicketMaster has?
Some information: (it is EXTREMELY clear no drop notifiers, no bots. No programs to help you buy.. Just because you don’t understand something or know doesn’t make it legal or right)
http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/terms.html (A brief look over and cut and pasted some, not all that is relevant)
- Use any robot, spider, offline reader, site search/retrieval application or other manual or automatic device, tool, or process to retrieve, index, data mine or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Content or the Site, including with respect to any CAPTCHA displayed on the Site. Operators of public search engines may use spiders to copy materials from the Site for the sole purpose of and solely to the extent necessary for creating publicly available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials. We may revoke this exception at any time and require removal of archived materials gathered in the past;
- Reproduce, modify, display, publicly perform, distribute or create derivative works of the Site or the Content;
- Decode, decrypt, modify, or reverse engineer any tickets or underlying algorithms or barcodes used on or in production of tickets or the Site;
- Use the Site or the Content in an attempt to, or in conjunction with, any device, program or service designed to circumvent any technological measure that effectively controls access to, or the rights in, the Site and/or Content in any way including, without limitation, by manual or automatic device or process, for any purpose.
- MANY other parts of the ToS refer bots, drop notifiers and other like apps.
www.ticketmaster.ca – they are in Canada and under Canadian law with their ToS you are breaking. So is livenation CA.….they are incorporated in dozens of countries and their ToS is supported by those countries.
Your day is coming bot users… Not trying to offend, but inform.
Tags: bots, illegal, ticketmaster
I think it everyday when I speak to my fellow ticket brokers. HOW THE HELL are these people ticket brokers. So many ticket brokers today are clueless when it comes to SEO, the web, computers and anything remotely technical. I bet most still have their VCR’s blinking 12:00am and they set themselves now days.
So this article will help you get a better understanding of one method of making some extra FREE pocket change and gaining online exposure which is way more valuable then the money you will make from the article views.
If you read Time, Inc500, Forbes or pretty much any “smart” publication you already know about eHow. You get paid to write How-To’s on their site. You don’t get paid to write them, but when people read them. In one case a stay at home mother was making $3500/month from it. It takes little to no work and all you have to do is write decent short How-To’s about ANYTHING.
So you get to make a small amount of money or large depending on how many How-To’s you write and this is the real pay off you can get traffic and sales as well. You can’t obviously say go to my site and buy concert tickets, but you can work it in some here and there. Getting traffic, sales and inbound links from eHow.com.
You have nothing to lose. When you get started you can use a Firefox add-on to track views and profits from the How-To’s you wrote.
Downland eHow Earnings Tracker
Tags: ehow, How-To's, make money, online exposure, website review
TicketTechnology is a GREAT ticket exchange that has the lowest cost for being a member then any other! They have a good POS (Point of Sale) system, some say is the best out there. They were recently purchased by StubHub and show the possibility of becoming stronger player in the market today.
The only reason EI and TN have kept as many clients as they have is ticket brokers get set and stay even if things aren’t so great. Ticket brokers also think that just because they know so and so at either one they get better deals or feel loyalty. Stupid idea, Ralph and Nick at EI didn’t go around getting people the inside ear on the TM buyout and helping people that once called the friends.
Keep personal feelings out of business. You’re just another account to them and with that said you might want to consider giving TicketTechnology a go. Keep in mind that you still need to post your inventory to all THREE exchanges. But using TicketTechnologyas your website plug-in or XML feed can be a profitable thing considering they are dirt cheap! You can still use another exchanges POS system with a TicketTechnology site. They are fast and personal people. I recommend giving them a try. If you are worried or not sure about it you can always use them on a secondary website to see how it goes. The one outstanding downfall you’ll hear from just about anyone that mentions TicketTechnology is the amount of ticket inventory, or lack there of. But they have shown growth and linking inventory with StubHub. That would be a smart move on StubHub’s part and by doing so would build interest and value in TicketTechnology.
I give TicketTechnology a 4 out of 5 stars!
Tags: ticket technology, tickettechnology, TT
You’ve had to have heard the term CMS by now. It’s everywhere. You get calls from companies or emails saying they can provide you a CMS or CMS website. What is a CMS and how can it help or effect your business?
A CMS stands for a Content Management System. When it refers to a website, it means it allows you to edit parts or pages of the website without any advacned or even intermediate technical skill. Put in short, Frontpage, Dreamweaver or even MS Word in your browser that allows even the most novice of technical or even web experience people to make advanced changes to your website. There are a few speciality companies out there that provide these types of websites solely to ticket brokers. ATBS and TicketPlatform are the main two. ATBS offers highly customizable XML websites that never look alike, are available on all three major exchanges and have no restrictions on your options. Your website can do anything. Some of the top ticket brokers in the nation use ATBS. TicketPlatform offers basically a minimally upgraded TicketNetwork plug-in website that can be picked out in a heat beat between 10 different websites. Unlike ATBS, TicketPlatform wants to rent their CMS website to you so you’ll never actually own it and you’re basically going from one cookie-cutter website to another and they try to get you on more monthly expense with their SEO packages and the like. I personally never understood how an SEO company could say they’re going to get you on top of the search engines and say the same thing to another ticket broker like TicketPlatform offers. Not to say TicketPlatform is all bad, but just trying to inform you from a ticket broker has been through the hoops of SEO companies, web design firms, offshore freelancers and the like.
A nice website could revolutionize your business if you’re a retail broker, wholesale or a little but of both. In too many ways to number, from higher search engine rankings to higher conversion rates from the customers who come to your website, CMS is there to help. It allows you or your tech staff to make fast changes to the front end of your website. If you don’t already have a CMS I recommend contacting both of the above companies to find out what’s best for you. Just keep in mind cheap isn’t always the best and you get what you pay for, the same as with your own inventory. Paying an individual or an inhouse designer to design you a fully functional XML CMS driven website will cost you many times what these 2 comapnies will chanrge you.
Tags: CMS, content managment system, eventinventory, plug-in, plug-in website, plugin, technical, ticketnetwork, tickettechnology, web design, website design, website development, xml, xml website
Like every company,TicketNetwork has it’s good points and bad points. There are people who love it and people who hate it.
Out of the three exchanges, many would consider TicketNetwork less scrupulous for many reasons. But their specials, discounts and package deals make many penny pincher brokers forget those issues and join the exchange.
With recent events (Ticketmaster/TicketsNow), leaving many brokers looking for a new exchanges, TicketNetwork is gaining more and more brokers every day. I’ve heard the number tossed around that 80% of the users on their exchange are affiliates which kind of makes sense seeing as the brokers on the exchange do receive a lot of orders. All three exchanges have comparable pos systems and similar pricing, with EventInventory being the most expensive.
Out of 5 stars I would give TicketNetwork 3 1/2 and recommend it second out of the three exchanges.
Tags: ticket network, ticketnetwork
This is a question that anyone with half a brain has been asking themselves since the secondary ticket market became legitimized from scalpers standing in front of events.
While ticket brokers still stand in front of events, some legally and some not, the secondary ticket market has grown into a huge market of totally legitimate and legal business establishments.
Organizations like the NATB have worked for years to not only get legislation that is easier on brokers and works for brokers, but to guarantee the survival of the secondary ticket market.
The secondary ticket market has always had to contend against morons that selfishly seek to profit at any means at their disposal and in doing so, damaging the good will and name of secondary ticket brokers everywhere.
Hardly a month goes by without some type of story regarding a fraudulent ticket broker or ticket broker company doing something to bring horrible attention to every ticket broker out there. Even entire states get angry at some ticket brokers like one recently in Nevada that went belly-up and then tried to re-enter the market with a “free” ticket exchange and ticket broker website design company. Then there are the “magic carts” that on the website the customer finds tickets for a very low price but by the time you get to the checkout page $100-$200 have been magically added to the total and can’t easily be explained without a math professor. This, of course, appears to be fraud. An entire exchange actually support this activity. Fortunately, there has always been good ticket brokers to help keep the good name of ticket brokers everywhere above profiteers like this.
Then comes the single worst event in the secondary ticket broker history to date that at first appears to be a godsend. Ticketmaster purchases TicketsNow. At first every ticket broker had t be excited. Big promises were made with tons of fresh revenue hitting the market making more sales for everyone. I am sure Ticketmaster had no ill-will towards the secondary ticket market. But stupid decisions lead not only to entire countries turning against the secondary ticket market and Ticketmaster, but lead to many of the ticket brokers customers and US states have turned against the market as well.
On top of all this bad news, Ticketmaster’s lead executive verbally turned against the secondary ticket market as well in an attempt to save his own company. A few soothsayers from the beginning said this would happen but most ticket brokers were so giddy at the possible implications that they made no contingency plans and now are making an attempt to leave the EventInventory exchange and are fearful about what is going to happen to all the information stored at that company.
This is one of the key reasons why a ticket broker needs to be on all 3 exchanges.
So in short, would the US Government destroy a multimillion dollar market? I would say Yes. There are much more valuable markets that the US government shuns for many reasons. Trade with countries, legallized “soft drugs” and so forth. I think the key point would be that the secondary ticket market needs to be regulated internally because you’re always going to have big and little shitheads out there ruining it for everyone.
It would be so simple to internally regulate the market. The 3 exchanges setup an origination with specific rules and if you’re not a part of the origination you’re not allowed to sell tickets or be a member on these exchanges. But this will never happen. Simply put, greed stands in the way. The second point being everyone is always scared or doesn’t like the idea of “big brother” or being controlled. For example, why people are worried about the government listening in on their phone calls. Why? If you’re not doing anything wrong, why do you care? You think the government cares if you’re using phone sex lines or cheating on your spouse? If you’re not doing anything wrong in the ticket market, why do you care if there’s internal regulation? If someone doesn’t do something one day soon, there’s a very large possibility that the US Government will. From outlawing it to regulating it, you can’t keep pissing off the voters and expecting nothing to happen.
Of course there are many more awesome brokers that do everything legitimately any day of the week, but it only takes a few bad ones to ruin a good thing.
To put a simple theory on how easy it would be to shut down the secondary ticket broker market if Federal authority or Ticketmaster would like to do so, all they’d have to do is make it so when tickets are purchased you have to enter your driver’s license number and only a certain amount of tickets can be purchased per license per year. When arriving at the venue, you must present that license. They match the picture to the face and scan the license at the door of the venues and print out a piece of paper with your seats on them and say “welcome”. No more ticket brokers. And that’s just one of a hundred ways I can list to end the ticket broker market. So yes, it can happen.
Let’s not allow it. Think before helping to further the bad attributes of the secondary ticket market and if you know anyone that unscrupulous actions, stop dealing with them.
Tags: advertise, advertisement, Being a Ticket Broker Today, congress, livedaily, resell, reselling, ROI, ticketmaster, ticketnetwork, tickettechnology
This is a very hot topic in light of current events where you have someone actually robbing and/or killing people they are dealing with. But with the obvious dangers aside, how else can you avoid being ripped off in the form of a stolen credit card or simply someone wasting your time?
This is easier said than done. Techniques on how to rip craigslist sellers off evolve every day. Beyond the bullk spam letters that are sent to every post in craigslist, the “Dear Sir/Madam, Consider your item sold…” etc., obviously the first thing you want to do is get the person on the phone and talk with them.
Then make sure, if possible, while selling on craigslist that the sale is local and it’s someone you can actually meet in a public place or your own store front. Unlike eBay or StubHub there is more anonymity on craigslist short of being the police and subpoena the ip records from their ISP.
The next thing to take into account is obviously the amount of the sale. I would recommend, depending on how much business and the average sale you make, never sell tickets over $500 on craigslist. Then one of the main steps is only deal in cash. No matter how cheesy this may sound, if your sale is for more than a couple hundred dollars, get a money pen.
Common sense and some street-smarts can be your best tools. Everyone thinks they have a lot of it but no one has more than the actual criminals. There’s only 1% of the population that actually pays attention. the other 99% walks around in a day-dream and that 1% are criminals. With that said, make sure you’re paying attention too. Use your street-smarts and common sense and it might not only save you from being ripped off from tickets that can’t be traced like a vehicle’s VIN but it might save your life. Don’t be so eager to sell the tickets before you eat them that you don’t pick up on the signs.
Finally, what would seem a no-brainer, never go anywhere without letting someone know you’re going to meet someone, how long it should take and when you expect to be done and of course call that person to let them know you are done. Do this for every craigslist sale you make.
Tags: chargeback, craiglist, fraud, online sales, retial, scam, scams
GoogleRankings.com allows SEO professionals and site owners to research where they are listed in several search engines. This is just one of MANY FREE search engine optimization tools out there that people bundle/remake and charge you for access or to own.
You have to remember 98% of SEM’s and SEO’s are lying sacks of shit. They will basically steal your money for nothing more than adding worthless META-TAGS or plagiarized content/text.
So it is key that even if you do not want to do SEO to maximize your web business for FREE (meaning without PPC or advertisement) you need to know some of the tools and knowledge of the trade.
So go to GoogleRankings.com and type in the keywords you want to find your site or specific page under separated by comma. Then the URL in the next box in (mysite.com or mysite.com/mypage.htm) and then enter you Google API key. If you do not have a Google API key click the link next to the box and signup and get one.
NOTE: You only need a Google API key if you are going to search Google for your placement.
Now select which search engines you want to query.
Then select how many results to search for top 40, top 100 etc. More results will result in much slower search.
Now hit the (What’s my Rank?) button and get the exact placement of your search engine placement.
Once you get more advanced, so can your searches with the advanced search option.
Tags: ask.com, google, googlerankings.com, How-To's, msn, search engine optimization, search engine placement, sem, seo, yahoo
I’m sure everyone has seen or used a flash website or flash elements in a website by now. While it’s not on every website, many sports and artists websites make use of lots of flash elements. But you, as a retail website, should not.
While flash can make a website look pretty and add some nice functions and features, they slow down the website and search engines CANNOT read it as of yet.
Not to mention, there are security minded users who disable flash all together. So beyond the point of potentially losing a customer due to slow load times or because they have it disabled in their browser, it will hurt your search engine standings.
Making parts of your website into flash is ok. But never make a part of your website that needs to be read by search engines a flash element. For example, link structure. If you have a smart web programmer, with all likelihood, they can make pretty much anything flash can do in different coding languages that search engines and users can read with ease (with some limitations).
I am sure you’ve also seen interactive seating charts for venues. These are a good example of flash and I would say this is an excellent place to use flash if you’re going to use flash on your website. Simply because search engines really have no need or business going to your shopping cart. But be cautions, myself and most people I have ever spoken to will not sit down and wait for your fancy-smancy seating charts to load. So make sure that your server has the speed to make it happen fast.
With all that said, be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into and how it affects your online business before using flash.
Tags: css, flash, website design, website development
Funny, This just happened to me at the office the other day what is the chances of them making a video about it?
Elevator – Open Mic Night – Watch more Elevator Show
Tags: funny, funny video
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